In the Forest of Light and Dark Read Online Free PDF

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     Heather then had no choice but to get on the phone with the police while Beau grabbed a hold of my step daddy dragging him out of the bar as my step daddy continued to yell obscenities at Ray.
     In the end, it had taken Ray five minutes to come back to his senses and recover from the punch. By then he had already developed a shiner on his left eye to match the one I’d given him on his right.
     On the law side of things, my step daddy ended up with a first degree assault charge, and a free ride to the police station, where he was later released on his own recognizance and given a court date to appear before the Honorable Judge Calvin Walker.
     Things could have been worse for him though because Calvin Walker ended up being the old man of one of my step daddy’s childhood friends, Frankie Walker. So, with a wink and a nod, my step daddy’s charge became dropped down to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct, and he was ordered to pay the minimum fine of 250 dollars, and do ten hours of community service. All in all, not bad for someone with several arrests in the past, and had a rap sheet stretching all the way back to when he was thirteen.
     My step daddy’s chivalry didn’t do us any favors in the financial department though. It meant that my parents most likely weren’t going to be able to make the mortgage payment for a third month in a row, and by now creditors were calling us day and night. It had rather become a lifestyle to which our phone remained almost permanently off the hook. To add to that, the pile of threatening collection letters arriving in the mail each day had made us all agonize at even going down to the end of the driveway to retrieve them from the box.
 
    *****
 
         After a week had passed since my step daddy’s arrest, he and I still hadn’t found any meaningful work yet. And instead of looking for work like I had done every day so far, my step daddy just spent most of his day on the couch drinking beers purchased with what little money we had left in savings. Which I’m sure was already earmarked for keeping the lights on or the water flowing.
     As he self-loathed on the couch while getting drunk, he would sulk to anyone who would lend him a sympathetic ear and gripe about how crummy his life was and how the world conspired against him. I thought it was really quite pathetic to watch a grown man act that way. At least his life wasn’t as bad as those pieces of white trash he’d spend all day binge watching on the Jerry Springer show, which he seemed to not be able to get enough of along with Maury , Montel , and Nancy Grace .
     But having known that my Step Daddy Cade had given up on looking for employment, I had decided that I was going to try again to give the money I had saved up for the Trans AM to my mama just as soon as she had gotten home from work at the salon. And this time I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. At the very least I reckoned it would’ve maybe bought her a little peace of mind if the bank and all the creditors quit calling and just left us alone for a little while.
     That evening when my mama did come home, I was all set to surprise her again with the money, but unfortunately as soon as I saw her getting out of the Family Truckster I could tell now wasn’t the best time to approach her. (And yes, we really do have a Family Truckster just like the Griswolds. It’s a piece-of-shit 1969 Pontiac Safari station wagon; pea green with faded and cracked beige leather interior and complete with rusted-out wheel wells.)
     But, like I’d said my mama was crying again which was shown to me by the handful of used Kleenex she was holding and her puffy, bloodshot eyes. (And yeah, I know, I’m starting to sound like a broken record. But my mama’s really sensitive though. At the time I thought it was just a New York thing because people from Alabama don’t seem all that uptight.)